Chaque nuit un rêve d’elle
by nova A
Summary: In real life Grissom can believe he is in control. It’s in his own dreams that he cannot escape. GS.


**Author's note :** Just a weird little short fic I've been working on. What the hell, decided to post it.

**Disclaimer :** They aren't mine, and lawsuits aren't cool.

Chaque nuit un rêve d'elle by nova A

In real life Grissom tries not to let Sara touch him. In real life he can believe that he is in control.

Ironically enough, it's in his own dreams that he cannot escape her.

Sunday.

In his dream her hair is long and it spills like water, trailing over his arm, leaving droplets in its wake. He looks at her, perplexed, because she's not wet, but somehow he is. They're in a pool of water, a pond, the two of them, and she's dry as a bone. He's drowning, going under. He flails, forgets everything he's ever known about swimming. Drops beneath the surface of water dark and slippery as oil, sees a thousand bubbles like lives flashing before his eyes. He sees Sara. Under the surface of the water with him, and wasn't she just up above, dry, safe? Now she's suspended, still, green snakelike creepers tangled around her body. He inhales in a panic. Finds that he can breathe the water, feels it cool and rushing in his lungs. He dives down and grabs her around the waist. Touches her face and her eyes open. She can breathe the water, too. Fish dart past, shiny flashes of silver, and they are alone together in the silent, still water.

He knows she'd be stunned if she knew exactly how often she appears now in his dreams. How she manifests, in various situations, in different forms. He always knows she's there, even if he can't see her. He can feel her, her presence. Sara, imprinted so carefully on his subconscious. Because his conscious mind does not know what to do about her. So often, he snaps awake gasping with fear for her safety. Or worse. The times that his sleep is heated and misty, crackling with lust. He wakes drenched in sweat and tangled in his sheets, and the apparition of Sara is all around, and he can't shake her.

Monday.

Her eyes. Dark eyes watching him from across a darker room. Long limbs. The tilt of her head. She says his name but her lips don't move. Her voice echoes in his head and she laughs, smiles without showing her teeth. Reaches for him. That vulnerable look on her face, the one he knows all too well. He goes to her, grips her hips tightly. She arches her back. Her hands are like spiderwebs on his arms.

He's never actually touched her, of course. Not like that.

He doesn't know a thing about the texture of the skin on the back of her neck, her belly, her thighs. But his imagination fills in the blanks neatly, and he doesn't question its reason. Doesn't want to. Asleep in his bed he can believe, at least for a short time, that he knows how she would feel against him. Beneath him.

Tuesday.

He dreams that she's been stabbed in the chest. She's bleeding from four deep wounds, and they're soaking her shirt. She needs his help. He scoops her frantic into his arms and she's heavy; he can feel her getting heavier by the moment. He has to get her to a hospital, has to find a doctor. But they're in the middle of the Nevada desert, and there's nobody around, and she's disappearing. Her breath rattles. Streaks of red stain her hands. She pushes weakly at him and he looks down, sees that she's afraid. It's only then that he remembers who did the stabbing. The knife is still in his back pocket, and he's horrified. Thinks that he should dust it for fingerprints, because it can't have been him that did this to her. But he knows it was. She doesn't die, instead turns slowly to stone, a small round smooth stone that he can hold in his hand. And in his dreaming mind that's as good as dead.

It's so strange when he sees Sara at the beginning of shift. For a split second a dreamscape flashes brilliant before him; he blinks and looks at the real Sara with different eyes. And his heart skips a beat at the thought of what happened in his own mind the previous night. The daring of it. It's almost shameful.

Wednesday.

He's wandering the CSI lab. It's much bigger than he remembers, a maze of add-on rooms and labs that he doesn't recognize. Somehow he's the only one who doesn't know where things are. He's looking, of course, for Sara; he knows that she paged him, but he can't seem to find the room she's working in. Distractions loom around every corner, and though he wants to ignore them, he finds that he physically cannot. Ecklie sternly dumps a stack of paperwork into his hands, and he has to take it back to his own office. On his next foray he looks through an out-of-place window into the women's bathroom and spots Catherine crying alone in a stall, makeup running down her cheeks. He stops to comfort her. Then Nick rides a red bicycle down the hall, and he has to chase after, yelling at him to stop. When all is said and done he still cannot locate Sara. A sense of urgency grows, pressing on his chest. He needs to find her, soon. Now. But the labyrinth of hallways is neverending. His feet won't move as quickly as they should. And before he knows it, he is hopelessly lost.

He knows that everyone dreams, every night. It's necessary for mental health; people who are deprived of REM sleep go insane. But he also seems to recall reading somewhere that less than ten percent of people remember most of their dreams on a daily basis. He has yet to decide how he feels about being a part of this exclusive little slice of humanity.

Thursday.

He doesn't sleep on Thursday. Instead he pulls a double, staving off exhaustion with coffee like burnt rubber from the bottomless breakroom pot. A ten-year-old has been murdered by his stepfather, and Grissom finds that it's wiser not to allow himself to dream while in the middle of such cases. Sara works the evidence with him, seemingly much less affected by the lack of sleep.

Once she told him that she had nightmares, too.

Friday.

In the dream he walks into the doorway of a very strange room. The walls are covered with antique cuckoo clocks of many different shapes and sizes. The floor is blue and brown; upon closer inspection he realizes that the bizarre carpet is actually hundreds of butterflies (_Morpho Menelaus, _his mind automatically supplies), all perched delicately at rest. Sara stands on a white stepladder, carefully examining one of the clocks. "There," she says with satisfaction. "I fixed it." The clock goes off, a tiny pink cuckoo jerking out of its hutch. Sara hops from her stepladder to the floor, and the butterflies take flight. They rise up, delicate wings gracefully fanning the air. He takes a breath and walks toward her. They meet in the center of the clock room, jewel-toned butterflies floating in slow motion through the air around them.

He questions what his mind, in such strangely symbolic language, is trying to tell him. The frequency of her appearances in his dreams has become alarming. It's beyond fascination; it borders on obsession. He doesn't want to believe that it may be as simple an idea as this: that he should be with Sara. That were they together in waking hours, his unconscious mind would no longer be compelled to bring her to him. That perhaps then, he would be able to indulge in the restful sleep of a man at peace.

Saturday.

Sara. Stretched out on his own bed, waiting for him. He doesn't know how she got into his townhouse, because he remembers burying his spare key in the yard. Candles glow steady and silent on the floor. They don't sputter when he walks past them. He lies beside her and she curls her body against his. For a moment he simply holds her, fanning his hand over the rise of her hip. But he knows that this will not be enough. And after a moment she moves. She pushes him onto his back and climbs on top of him. Her hands slide up his chest. She says his name and the candles finally flicker. Willingly, he offers himself up, and surrendering to her is so right that it almost tastes sweet on the back of his tongue.

He cannot be held accountable for the strange things his mind does while he sleeps.

Or so Gil Grissom always tells himself when he awakens.


End file.
